I Have Returned, but I Cannot Lay down My Gun-Chapter 782: Washington D.C (4)

"The White House is burning! Code Black, Code Black!"

"The air defense network has detected something! It's a missile! The missile is heading towards the White House! Coming from the south of the Potomac River! Intercept it!"

"Two unidentified gigantic hovercrafts spotted on the southern riverbank! They're approaching the Tidal Basin!"

"Unidentified military forces are pouring into the vicinity of the White House... those crazy bastards are firing rocket launchers! Engage!"

"...What the hell is going on? What is happening right now...?"

"A backdraft due to fire has occurred on the third floor of the White House! It is believed that a large number of the Dagger Team and former Secretary of Defense Janet, who is now a cyborg, were inside!"

"Can anyone really survive that hell?"

"...I don't know."

Was the Dagger Team the Grim Reaper, or perhaps a disaster deity bringing calamity? Such thoughts briefly crossed Kelly, the Chief Operations Officer, as she was monitoring the military activities across the capital and leading efforts to assist them.

This wasn’t a typical TOC, but a Special Operations Center dealing with the most sensitive and classified operations. She sat at the center, struggling to meet the overwhelming demands for military intelligence coming from all directions.

High-ranking generals, numerous high-level officials stationed in D.C., and many others were urgently requesting information. While she sent endless streams of data in response to these requests, one thought continuously lingered in her mind.

"Well... I should brace for the shock coming to Washington D.C."

A woman from the Dagger Team, one of the 'mutants' as they were called, with a unique appearance never seen before, yet undeniably beautiful, had uttered something under her breath.

At first, it didn’t make sense, but it was exactly as she said. No other words or phrases could explain the situation as it was.

Surveillance drones across the skies of Washington D.C. were falling one by one due to EMP attacks, and two hovercrafts, unlike anything seen before, were heading upstream along the Potomac River toward the Tidal Basin.

The people inside the room had all been given basic explanations by Kelly.

Someone spoke up.

"...Should we call this the disaster brought by the Dagger Team?"

"No... that’s not it. It's more fitting to say it’s an outcome that was unforeseen until now."

"That’s..."

"Perhaps it was always going to happen eventually, and the Dagger Team’s arrival just accelerated things."

"..."

What was the truth?

But there was one thing everyone in the room could agree on. The truth no longer mattered. Whoever it was, the time was coming when no one could care about causality anymore.

If it had to be summed up in one line...

"...I wonder how many people will survive this chaos."

A level of chaos far beyond anything previously witnessed descended upon the capital, just a week after the Dagger Team's arrival.

After Manhattan, Washington D.C. was now engulfed in the flames of pandemonium.

"...Ha, it looks like everyone’s completely lost it."

"You’re starting to look a little less human now. Whether you're a cyborg or an android, if you’ve given up on being human, you should act like a machine."

"...Heh, heh. How long do you think you’ll be able to keep that calm?"

"You locked the door to kill one of us, and filled the room with furniture that would burn easily, and still failed. Talk about incompetence."

Meanwhile, inside the third floor, where the backdraft had passed and a storm of flames reached over 1,000 degrees, remarkably, the Dagger Team had lost no one.

"Idiots. I’m terribly disappointed that you couldn’t even manage that."

"My apologies, Vendetta."

"I don’t care what happens to your lives. Charge in. The only useful thing you can do is to take down those beasts and die."

"Such grand words. Could I perhaps receive this in return?"

The third floor, after the storm, hadn’t changed much.

To ensure the president’s safety, non-flammable curtains, furniture, and separate devices had all disappeared, and everything was burning. The only thing flowing into the room was the air coming through the broken windows.

Amidst it all, several figures seemed to be staring each other down, unfazed by the fire.

Of course, to be precise, one was blatantly doing something else.

It was Olivia.

She was assembling a Titan.

"...To be calmly assembling a gun in this situation, it’s astonishing how out of your mind you are. Did Black Eagle underestimate you so much?"

"That’s none of my concern. I’ll do my best to kill whoever I need to. And..."

A brief silence.

In the meantime, Olivia, having firmly fixed the barrel, laughed.

"Once you’ve taken a shot, things will be different."

The intense wind, caused by the fire, was swirling inside the room, but even that noise was drowned out by the sharp charging sound that filled the world.

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An unfamiliar feeling—unease. She was desperately trying to maintain composure, but the noise from the massive weapon Olivia was holding made Black Eagle feel the uncertainty of the world.

However, they couldn’t afford to intervene. If it had been possible, they would have done so already. After all, in the mere five minutes of battle, four of their guards had already perished, and they couldn’t risk any more danger.

If they could afford to worry about it...

As Laurentina kicked the ashes at her feet, the machine named Vendetta quickly pulled away, having been struck by the warning circuit of its logic, and in that moment-

Boom!

A flash that pierced everything in its path tore through the tank shell-blocking wall.

Of course, it wasn’t just the wall that was pierced. One of the cyborgs, who had been caught in the blast, was literally torn apart and thrown to the floor. What had been a single piece when it began flying was now in two pieces upon hitting the floor.

Vendetta quickly attempted to shoot its plasma cannon from its wrist, but it was impossible. At that moment, Eugene attempted to close in and cut off the cannon itself. The sight was something even the most advanced humanoid couldn’t have seen.

The body’s movements assisted, blending with the surrounding environment, and the bulletproof gear, known as the codename Shadow, boasted extreme stealth performance even in the electronic world.

The assault team was wearing this, making it heavier than usual, but also granting them overwhelming combat ability.

But that wasn’t all they had.

The Dagger Team, without any warning, tossed grenades ahead, and as a result, Black Eagle didn’t notice the assault team pulling out small and large components from their waist or pouches and gathering them in one spot.

"Block them!"

"Not happening, you bastard..."

"These damn operators—!"

Vendetta wasn’t an idiot. As the grenade scattered into hundreds of pieces, she ran toward the sound, taking the blast head-on, but standing there was Logan.

Among the Dagger Team, Logan Blemis, the mutant with the strongest physique, endurance, and raw power. She halted Vendetta, who was charging at her with a physical force equivalent to a car moving at 70 km/h, straight in her tracks.

With a screeching sound, the White House floor under Logan’s feet shattered as she stomped down. However, it wasn’t an issue that she had grabbed her.

With a metallic clink, her arm detached, revealing the cannon she had previously been unable to use.

However, Vendetta still didn’t understand why the Dagger Team had thrown the grenades.

She had to pay for that mistake with a broken neck.

Thud!

"My neck...!"

"You don’t seem too damaged, huh? How many more shots should I take?"

"Dammit, let go of me!"

"Who charged at me?"

Just after, as smoke and flames cleared, Laurentina appeared from across the room.

She was holding something with a 32-round drum magazine attached to a bulky, rugged-looking body—a weapon that, at a glance, was unmistakably an AA-12 automatic shotgun.

At that moment, Vendetta realized why the Dagger Team had thrown the grenades. They were literally buying time.

Buying time to assemble their weapons.

As fire erupted from the muzzle, Vendetta’s neck snapped back violently.

The horrific shock was unbearable. It wasn’t multiple crushed steel pellets falling, but a single jagged chunk of metal that collided with her head, dented, and bounced off. Yet, this was only the beginning.

Laurentina began to shoot, unloading the full 32-round drum filled with FRAG-13 fragmentation shells at a rate of 300 rounds per minute. For a cyborg relying solely on physical durability with no decent armor, it was a perfect countermeasure.

Vendetta quickly widened the distance and sent her guards forward.

But creating distance meant giving the world’s best marksman an opportunity to shoot.

The third floor of the White House flared up once again.

A blinding flash, traveling at a murderous speed of 5 km per second, cut across the reception room, penetrating even the bomb-proof walls that could withstand most explosions.

Though she tried to avoid it, Olivia had already read Vendetta’s movements and the outcome was clear. Janet, the Secretary of Defense, was torn in half along with two other guards.

"Break through! Confirm the kill!"

If you are reading this translation anywhere other than Novelight.net or SilkRoadTL, it has been stolen.

"To face the Dagger Team, you should have at least brought a missile. The party’s not over yet, so where do you think you're going?"

With Logan and Eugene leading the way, wrapped in a high-heat protective field, Laurentina leisurely swapped the empty drum for a fresh one.

The second drum contained high-explosive shotgun rounds, enhanced for better detonation. When it hit the White House’s third floor, everything alive inside was swept away by the fiery flood.

Against the background of continuing missile intercepts outside, the Dagger Team wrapped up the skirmish in less than 10 minutes.

Amidst the bodies of the guards, who were cut down by intense heat or torn apart by railguns or fragmentation shells, Logan and Eugene severed the arm of Vendetta, who was desperately trying to escape, leaving only her upper torso.

They pinned her to the ground, and the conversation continued.

"...This isn’t over, is it?"

"On the contrary, I’d ask you—do you think this is the end? The Dagger Team won’t stop until we hang all your corpses at the Washington Monument, don’t worry, we’ll find them soon enough."

Crack!

There were no more words.

As Laurentina kicked the lifeless robot’s body aside, Logan added:

"The real Janet Secretary, the one hidden in the underground bunker, has been found. They’re bringing her up, so we should think about how to get out of here."

"Sounds good. I feel like «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» I’ll be roasted alive if we stay here any longer."

"We’ve been here less than four days, and already at the climax... this is troublesome..."

The way to open the bomb-proof doors was simple.

As Olivia was charging the railgun, Logan added:

"The scrap cleanup is done, Aurora. We’ll be heading down soon."

"Doesn’t the new codename feel a bit odd to you?"

"Shut up, you bastard."

It couldn’t be helped, being a polar bear.

Thirty seconds before the Dagger Team left the room.

"Intense attacks are coming from outside the defense wall! The enemy numbers are estimated at over a brigade!"

"What the hell is happening? The White House is under attack!"

"All internal personnel have evacuated, but we can’t locate Secretary Janet!"

"...Pentagon has entered the fray! Something major has happened to Secretary Janet! She’s presumed to be kidnapped!"

"...It’s a mess outside. If those damn Black Eagles hadn’t blown everything up, we would’ve been able to leave through the secret passage..."

"...So, those bastards are the Black Eagles? I never thought there was info I hadn’t heard of."

"I recommend you remain silent, Secretary. You are in a state of near mental breakdown due to heavy drug administration and muscle spasms."

"I can’t accept you telling me to remain silent while the White House is in this condition."

As the third floor of the White House burned, over a thousand enemies—where they got rocket launchers from, no one knew—fired at the fortified operation base walls, and missiles flying from the Potomac River were intercepted with explosions and flashes endlessly rising.

Though not all of this was visible, the voices of allies in panic endlessly echoed through the intercom, and the entire White House vibrated as explosions echoed.

On the endless staircase leading from the underground of the White House to the ground, one figure, slumped over Chester’s back, struggled to lift their head and glance over their shoulder.

It was Janet G. Harper. Not a fake, but the real one, a true leader of America in the current moment.

Due to the action of nanomachines, her mind was slowly clearing, but she had spent hours or possibly a whole day in a horrendous position, causing her muscles to seize up uncontrollably.

"...So, you’re the Dagger Team. If the situation were different... well, never mind. What’s the current situation?"

"Washington D.C. is under attack, Madam Secretary. The only success so far is that the Dagger Team has turned the cyborg who was impersonating you into scrap."

"Before I lost my memory... No. I wasn’t mistaken. Web, that fool, ended up causing this. He said something meaningful right before the crisis occurred."

"...You’ll testify about that at the Pentagon later."

"Is the Pentagon still intact? At least that’s a relief..."

The entire White House was burning, and the Pentagon had just joined the fray. Hundreds, if not more, of enemies were firing rocket launchers from unknown locations. Meanwhile, missiles continued to fly over the Potomac River, intercepted by explosive flashes that lit up the sky.

Although not everything was visible, the constant panic from allies on the intercom and the vibrations shaking the entire White House from explosions were enough to convey the scale of the chaos.

At the bottom of an endless staircase leading from the White House’s underground to the surface, one figure, slumped over Chester’s back, lifted their head with great effort and looked over their shoulder.

It was Janet G. Harper, not the fake one, but the true Secretary of Defense, the woman leading America at that very moment.

Thanks to the nanomachines in her system, her mind was beginning to clear, but after spending what felt like hours or perhaps even a day in an uncomfortable and horrible position, her muscles were spasming uncontrollably.

"...So you’re the Dagger Team. If the situation weren’t like this... well, I guess it doesn’t matter. What’s the current status?"

"Washington D.C. is under attack, Madam Secretary. The only success so far is that the Dagger Team has turned the cyborg that was impersonating you into scrap."

"Before I lost my memory... no. I wasn’t mistaken. Web, that idiot, caused this disaster. He said something cryptic before the crisis struck."

"...That’s something you’ll testify about later at the Pentagon."

"Is the Pentagon still standing? Well, at least that’s something to be thankful for."

With a slow, labored step, Janet moved, the cold winter air brushing against her body, which was ill-prepared for the harsh conditions. The chill began to seep through her, despite not having even the basic winter clothing.

"What’s going on?"

"Wait a minute. The helicopter suddenly went berserk... Shit, there’s a missile attached to a drone beyond the fortress wall! The helicopter is being targeted!"

"Damn it, it’s been launched! Get out of there!"

"Get inside!"

Boom!

Two AIM-174 missiles cut through the cold winter air. With a moment’s delay, the Black Hawk, releasing flares and chaff, was struck in the side by the missile. The deafening sound that followed caused the helicopter to crumple and shatter in mid-air.

The missile, traveling at speeds exceeding Mach 1, struck the helicopter, turning it into thousands of fragments that rained down toward the White House’s entrance. The Dagger Team and Secretary Janet quickly retraced their steps.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Boom!

Through the destroyed walls of the fortress, two surviving Tomahawk missiles pierced through Washington D.C.'s air defense system and slammed into the White House.

As the explosion rocked the building, everything turned to darkness.